Homegrown Organic Farms in Porterville, CA, has a slight increase of about 10 percent in its stone fruit-producing acreage this year as some of the company’s growers have moved out of other commodities and switched to stone fruit, according to Stephen Paul, sales manager for stone fruit, specialty fruit and grapes.

As young plantings mature, “we see the program growing nicely” with incremental annual increases over the next five to six years, he said.

“As a company, we have just put in a white nectarine program,” which is new for Homegrown, Mr. Paul said. Those will come into production beginning in about three years “to complement our array of commodities [with] some of the best white nectarine varieties.”

Homegrown’s organic stone fruit program continues to evolve, he said. “We pulled out” some older varieties and have planted newer ones “to help balance out our program from May through July.” But “putting in an entire white nectarine program was probably the biggest thing that we did” in the stone fruit category. Those just went in this year. Small volumes of some of the new white nectarines varieties should be available in 2015, “but by 2016 we should have everything available.”

Homegrown already has “a complete white peach program” as well as full programs of yellow peaches and yellow nectarines, Mr. Paul said. “The yellow nectarines and yellow peaches complement each other very well throughout the program.”

In plums, “we have red and black plum programs that pretty much focus on the June and July time frames,” he said. “And then we have an array of Pluots, the biggest and most prominent of all the Pluots being the Flavorosa. We come out very strong with that variety the first week of May and run through mid-June.”

Homegrown starts off the stone fruit season with early-season apricots. “We will have some Tasty Rich coming soon, in about a week or 10 days,” he said April 19. “Then we will move into some yellow peaches” such as May Sweets and some early nectarines such as Zee Fire.

From the end of April “all the way through May and into the first part of June is solid with some of the best [stone fruit] varieties, and nice crops on all of them,” he said. “So we should have some nice continuity opportunities. And I imagine it would be the same” for the industry as a whole.

Many stone fruit varieties are not generally identified by variety at retail, but simply as, for example, yellow peaches or white nectarines because they share similar characteristics with other varieties through the course of the season. But Mr. Paul said that he believes “there are certain varieties among the spectrum of all the commodities that deserve to be called out” for their unique attributes, “and there needs to be some romance on them.” Homegrown has identified some of those varieties and is beginning to develop “what we call profile marketing, giving a little bit of detail” about what makes those varieties special.”

When The Produce News talked to Mr. Paul, he and Cherie France, the company’s sales and marketing assistant, were in process of putting together the profiles for two varieties so identified: the Tasty Rich apricot and the Flavorosa Pluot. “As we go through the year, we will continue to do that this year on a grander scale” with other selected varieties, he said.

The variety for Tasty Rich reads, in part: “Round in shape with a light yellow-orange color, the Tasty Rich apricot is a freestone fruit, firm and meaty with a flavor that is predominantly apricot, but suggestive of a plum with a pleasant aftertaste.”

Flavorosa is described as “a cross between a plum and apricot” that is “so good, it should be illegal. The first harvest for our 2013 Flavorosa Pluots will be around May 15 with harvest continuing through the first week to 10 days into June. These early gems are incredibly sweet with a deep red and juicy flesh that is full of flavor. That’s why many foodies call them ‘over-the-sink plums’ ... they’re just too hard to eat neatly!”

Demand for organic stone fruit continues to grow, Mr. Paul said. “Many retailers are now understanding just how powerful that is in terms of reaching their customers.” That makes organic stone fruit “an exciting place to be” in the market, “especially if you have the right varieties and good-quality fruit, [which] we do here.”

In August this year, Homegrown will transition from stone fruit into a new organic Asian pear program, “which we have never had in the past,” other than to “dabble in it last year,” he said. Later in the season, “we will transition to the pomegranates and the persimmons.”